‘You could try stand-by,’ she said, ‘but the chances of getting you all on the one flight are very slim.’
I returned in defeat to the table, where everyone was having another cup of tea.
‘So it turns out —’ I began to confess.
‘I knew it!’ Mum said. ‘I just didn’t want you to bite my head off if I questioned you on it.’
‘Good on you, Jude,’ Dad added.
‘I thought it would be nice for Millie to see more of Australia,’ I said positively. ‘So I’ve decided we’ll drive to Brisbane today. I insist on doing all the driving.’
Three ageing parents in a car for over twelve hours. I don’t think I even need to elaborate. Before my bladder recently aged about thirty years too prematurely, I was the kind of driver who preferred to make no stops on the way. None. For any reason whatsoever. This trip to Brisbane, given everything was all my fault, I was desperate for us to get to our destination as fast as possible, but father’s tiny always-full bladder, Millie’s smoking habit and my mother’s need to sit somewhere nice for lunch (that is, somewhere that serves sauvignon blanc from New Zealand) blew out the trip by a couple of hours. We arrived in Brisbane well after dinner, having nearly died on the motorway when the rental car’s brakes decided to stop working.
It will probably come as little surprise that I’m still living down this little fiasco, some ten or twelve years later. Vicky’s mother, Nita, takes particular delight in reminiscing over what I consider in retrospect a minor hiccup and I have noticed that when it’s mentioned, Millie seems to shut down in an attempt to avoid reliving any part of the drive. A pleasant, ground-level exploration of her son’s adopted home, it was not.
It seems that once you reach a certain age, coping with hitches – unexpected interruptions to normal programming – is not only not an option, it leaves an impression of PTSD. Missing luggage one year almost ruined Millie’s entire eight-week trip, though it was delivered to our door two days after her arrival and Jeff had taken her shopping for essentials and clothes in the interim. Millie leaves bags full of clothes and toiletries with us (in case of these very incidents) but will inevitably pack the same items and drag them all the way from the UK two years later, only to leave another supply for next time on her departure. If your local supermarket has run out of Dove body wash, it is not people hoarding through fear of another lockdown. You will find it all in our spare wardrobe. We have hired a van just to relocate it the several times we’ve moved over our eighteen years together.
While credit cards are more or less universal these days, Millie won’t bring one with her. Instead she carries around a mound of Australian dollars that she’s exchanged at some ridiculous rate in a place on the West Bromwich high street, thereby adding the fear of getting mugged and losing thousands of dollars to her stress levels.
In preparation for the arduous and bound-to-be torturous return flight, she begins packing her suitcase two weeks before she leaves Australia. Having decided which clothes will not be required for the last fourteen days, each item is meticulously washed, ironed, folded and put carefully into her oversized luggage . . . and every single item will be washed, ironed and folded upon her return to Birmingham. You can’t be too careful.
I have to admit that the first time Millie visited, our fastidiously curated itinerary might have triggered some lasting anxiety. The UK travel agent put Millie on the wrong bus to Heathrow and she very nearly missed the flight. Then, on the return leg during a stopover in Tokyo, with just twenty pounds in her pocket, Millie again found herself on the wrong bus, which wasn’t going to her stopover hotel, but rather to, in her words, ‘a field in the middle of nowhere’. Petrified, she somehow managed to hail a taxi and convince the driver to take her last twenty pounds to get her to the hotel. Not quite Banged Up Abroad, but still a beyond-harrowing ordeal for a woman of more senior years showing her immense love to a son, his partner and their cat (though I may have the last two in the wrong order), who choose to live fifteen thousand kilometres away. Perhaps also a small contributor to her own Airport Hypertension Disorder.
But I have to give credit where credit’s due. Millie still comes every second year knowing she will find the journey intolerable, even though we have ensured all departures are now from Birmingham, thus eliminating the hazard of wrong buses to Heathrow.
I think it’s highly unlikely my own mother would be capable of solo international travel. That is until I ship her off to Glen for good and the choice will no longer be hers to make.
Perhaps airports could have staff in charge of what I’ll term ‘unaccompanied majors’. Drop your parents off at the airport, kiss them goodbye, and some nice flight attendant will escort them through security and onto the plane, making sure that they have plenty of orange juice, a box of sultanas, a crossword book with crayons (to save the pain of having to explain how the in-flight entertainment system works), and see them off at the other end.
When Charlie and Lucy visited us years ago for the school holidays, they’d flown as unaccompanied minors for the first time, and that journey had (mostly) gone to plan. All four of us parents wanted everything to go smoothly. Their mothers, Vicky and Jane, got them to us unscathed, then it was my time to return the favour.
Just as I was leaving the property, I received a call from someone at Qantas.
That’s unusual, I thought as the guy identified himself. They must do this for all unaccompanied minor passengers.
‘Mister Alexander, are you far from the airport?’ he asked. ‘We’re just about to close check-in.’
I restrained myself from launching into a tirade about the plight of my poor, unaccompanied children and instead said, ‘Early?’
The man laughed. I should have been pleased that airport staff find me so hilarious. ‘The departure time for the flight is in twenty minutes,’ he said.
Turns out, while I’d been sensible enough (this time) to double check the time of the kids’ flight, I hadn’t been cluey enough to double check which time and had instead focused on their arrival time in Brisbane.
I returned to our property a little disconcerted and explained my mistake to Jeff . . . and Millie who happened to be visiting.
‘Oh Toddy,’ she said in her thick Brummy accent, and tutted wryly to herself.
Twelve hundred bucks later, the kids were booked on another flight. I called their mothers to explain the later arrival.
‘Please don’t tell your mother,’ I pleaded with Vicky, but she was already laughing and I knew my begging was pointless. Vicky’s mother, Nita, still dines out on that monumental Toddy stuff-up, too.
Thanks to that experience, now when I travel, I’m in full-on OCD mode, just like my parents. I check the itinerary at least twenty times before the departure day, and more so on the day of. I always check in online as soon as it’s open to avoid unnecessary, unplanned for delays and to secure me an aisle seat, because watching the ground fall away beneath those speeding pieces of metal hurtling up into the sky gives me the heebie jeebies.
Though I have driven the same route at least fifty times, I double check Google Maps for the directions from our house to the airport, making note of the estimated duration, and explore multiple routes just in case. I allow an extra fifteen-minute driving time, for fear I will get stuck behind a slow- moving truck or encounter unexpected roadworks. I still plan to arrive at the airport one complete hour (nothing more, nothing less) earlier than the flight’s departure time. I park the car in the closest (most expensive) car park because it is less distance to walk and that minimises the risk of unforeseen delays between locking the car and entering the airport.
I travel without deodorant, in case I’m not up to date on the latest liquids rules and such an item would only slow me down through security. I close my eyes during take-off and take my shoes off once the plane has levelled out, even though Air Crash Investigation has told me this is not a safe thing to do. I order one beer during the flight to place a firm full stop at the end of my departure preparations, knowing whatever happens now is utterly beyond my control. At least I haven’t been slowed down by chunky gold jewellery.
It might be possible that the gods of the universe have officially decreed that, once you turn forty, travel will challenge even the calmest among us, and it will be a rare individual who boards an aircraft, flies coolly, and lands undisturbed at their chosen destination. Or they travel business class.
It might also be possible that while I think I’m gracefully gliding through the airport like I built the thing, my parents in tow like little cygnets, they actually sniff out my stress and inhale it.
* * *
Despite the tension and drama, my parents still go off on unaccompanied adventures, well accompanied usually by my Uncle Paul and Aunty Marie. Sure enough, they always return from Todd-less holidays intact. No limbs or senses are missing, they’ve not been the victim of any crimes or misdemeanours. Mum always says she’s glad to be home, yet still returns with that glint in her eye that says she’s thoroughly enjoyed herself. Holidays serve to remind her there’s more to life than ritual afternoons playing the pokies at her local club. (Though of course if poker machines exist in any foreign destination, she will be drawn to them like the keenest of terriers to whichever bolt-holed rodent they’ve developed a taste for). Dad usually returns complaining of extreme fatigue and doesn’t hesitate to go into graphic detail about how the flights or travel have impacted his bowel movements. Yet, despite everything, they’ll proclaim the trip a success.
‘That’s definitely the last one for me,’ Dad will then say.
‘Yep, me too. We’re just getting too old for all that,’ Mum agrees.
Then, two or three weeks later, Uncle Paul will telephone and they’ll end up agreeing to one last trip – this time the European rivers cruise Dad’s been dreaming about for decades. Only we all know that won’t be their last at all.
* * *
I haven’t actually travelled interstate or internationally with my parents for years. These days, that sort of travel tends to fall on my brothers’ shoulders. Glen and James try to take them away somewhere nice each time they come back to Australia, and when Grant and Bec recently extended their cruise invitation to Jeff and me, we politely refused.
The short trips we have done have been bearable for all concerned – Mum, Dad, Jeff and me. With a little careful design I can ensure different hotel rooms, different vehicles and time for separate activities. Call me selfish, or more nicely, considerate, but trips together will generally be limited to a night or two – as much of a happy disruption to their routine as it is to mine.
As for a cruise, two weeks locked on a boat with no escape is a tad too far for me. Grant can take all the kudos he likes, and I have no doubt that fortnight away will be used as justification for him doing very little to manage Mum and Dad’s day-to-day requirements. And that’s exactly how my parents will view his selfless generosity. Just as they see Glen’s visits back to Australia and a couple of nights by the beach making up for years of unavailability.
